Who misses the speaker grills?

[TSE]

The new MacBook Airs are GORGEOUS!

And this is very nitpicky, but I can't get over the one design choice I think actually looks worse than the M1 Air.

The speaker grills are gone!



Who else prefers seeing the speaker grills on either side of the keyboard?

 

[AudiHeel]

If it doesn't effect the sound or volume, I would rather not have the speaker holes, just to avoid something getting in them.

 

[JPack]

Most likely a cost saving measure. Drilling a bunch of holes in the unibody chassis can't be cheap. If it were some audio engineering breakthrough, it would have been applied to MBP 14/16 given it has the same chassis design.

 

[Yr Blues]

Anyone know the location of the speakers?

 

[mbp17forever]

I’m missing them. I wrote it also a couple of days ago in the other topic.

Speaker grills are premium, it was good that they put them on the first Retina Air (and all the airs after that) but now they are gone. We are back to pre 2017 MBA style without speaker grills.

 

[jav6454]

Most likely a cost saving measure. Drilling a bunch of holes in the unibody chassis can't be cheap. If it were some audio engineering breakthrough, it would have been applied to MBP 14/16 given it has the same chassis design.

From a video about when Apple came out with the 15" unibody, they used lasers to make the grills, not drill bits. That said, it's one less process which does reduce manufacturing costs.